Friday, March 28, 2008

Holy Trinity Questions

Anne, the “Weekend Fisher,” whose posts are always thoughtful and thought-provoking, has some fascinating questions on her blog about the Holy Trinity. I commend her for posting them. If you aren’t Orthodox, you really need to ask these questions she poses:

1. Seeking to know "God in Himself" may be misguided. Do we know anything definitive about God in Himself? Did God choose to be known in that way or remain that way?

2. Speaking of "God in Himself", do we actually know whether the Son and the Spirit, apart from creation, were meaningfully distinct from the Father?

3. The phrase "God in three persons" has at least the potential to be misleading, even given the changes in language and meaning over time. To what extent is it possible to complete the phrase "God in three ______" (insert noun) without obscuring the unity of God or obscuring the origins of Son and Spirit from the Father or obscuring the differences between Father, Son, and Spirit? To be sure, additional explanations have been added and the phrase does not stand alone. But have the additional explanations been adequate? If not, then filling in that blank is not a helpful move and may be an unhelpful move.

4. When we call the Holy Spirit a "person" (even granted the shifts in the meaning of words over the different times and languages involved), does considering the Spirit as Person prevent us from considering the Spirit as Spirit? Is Spirit in a different category than Person, so that a Spirit belongs to a Person (in the more modern sense at this point) and is rightly known as the Spirit of that Person? When we consider the Holy Spirit as Person do we lose sight of the Spirit as the Spirit of God?

5. I consider it likely that the Son (the Word of God, the Christ) is an intermediary not only in his role but also in his essential nature.


Here’s how it looks from the Orthodox side:

1. God cannot be known as He is in Himself; or, in Orthodox parlance, cannot be known in His Essence (Being). We have no clue what God’s Essence is. We know a few things about it, such as that it is eternal and that it is shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but what that is, which is eternal and is shared by the Three, we do not know.

This is not due to any choice God made. It’s due just to His being that way inherently. He is inherently infinite, eternal, unspeakable, beyond comprehension, beyond speech or thought, dwelling “in light inaccessible”. It isn't because we aren't smart enough to figure out God, although that is also true; it's because to know God's Being, one would have to be God.

We can know God, though, insofar as God is as God does. We can know His love, His will, His knowledge, His creativity, His goodness, and all the other characteristics of what He does. What God does is just as truly and fully God as what God is. More accurately, His Powers are fully as divine as His Essence.

Above all, we can see Jesus, the perfect “imprint” of God, (Hebrews 12:3), "the brightness of God’s glory."

2. Who God Is, of course, is only manifest in the creation; otherwise there is nobody to whom He can be manifest, and nothing through or by which He could manifest Himself. But yes, Son and Holy Spirit were “meaningfully distinct from the Father” before God created anything. They belong to the category of Who God Is, while Creation belongs to the category of What God Does. The Son and the Holy Spirit were already, from eternity, other “Persons”, other centers of awareness, of freedom, of goodness, of truth, and already in relationship with each other. We say of the Son (Nicene Creed), eternally begotten "before all the ages."

3. The phrase “God in three persons” is distinctively Western. The Orthodox say it the other way around: Three Persons in one God. We begin with the Three because we begin with concrete experience (revelation in history) and historically, the Church encountered Three concrete Persons, not One mysterious, nebulous Essence. It’s the Three we were given to deal with, and for us the theological problem is how to explain that in the Church's experience of these Three, we still discover and know only One God.

This is vastly more important than it appears at first blush, because it turns out to be the difference between two whole theologies, the one built upon what for us must remain an abstraction (Essence) and the other built upon revelation, upon "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled." (I John 1:1)

The Greek term, “Hypostasis” helps us. It isn’t really “person” but “subsistence.” Much as a biologist might say, “The genus Hyperflatulosoma subsists in three species, namely, H. optima, H. maxima, and H. minima,” we can say God subsists in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Okay, so no biologist would say that, because I invented the names, but you get the point, don’t you?) "Hypostasis" is a term that, unlike “person,” does seem to wear well with time.

4. Spirit is the very essence of what a person is. A man’s spirit is his deepest, innermost self; all the rest is outgrowth of that in the material world, or appendage. (Usually, these days, we in the West are scarcely able to discern our own spirits, so identified and preoccupied are we with body and mind. To rediscover our own spirit can be an exhilarating, if sometimes puzzling, adventure for a person en route to Orthodoxy!)

5. God the Son is in every way equal to God the Father, except as to origin. (While the Father is unoriginate, the Son has His timeless, eternal origin from the Father.) The Son is, in His own Being, a Person (or Hypostasis), not a function. Not an intermediary.

Ditto, the Holy Spirit: a Person, not to be reduced to a function. Not, for example, the love between the Father and the Son.

These questions are wonderful examples of issues that simply do not (and cannot) appear in Orthodoxy. That’s because they are based upon premises foreign to Orthodoxy. A solid Orthodox Christian anthropology, plus appreciating the distinction between God’s Essence and His Energy, plus a firm rejection of that error called Filioque, will together keep such issues as these from arising.

6 comments:

Weekend Fisher said...

Hi Anastasia

Thank you for responding.

1. I think we're in agreement here, & you put it very beautifully.

2. The Son and the Holy Spirit were already, from eternity, other “Persons”, other centers of awareness, of freedom, of goodness, of truth, and already in relationship with each other. We say of the Son (Nicene Creed), eternally begotten "before all the ages."

I wonder if I made myself clear. I agree that the Son/Word/Wisdom of God was conceived in the mind of God before all the ages. The part that I'm wondering is whether it follows that, as you so nicely put it, they were other "centers of awareness" (roughly what I meant by "meaningfully distinct from the Father"). Based on what do we say so? How would we know that?

3. Btw ever since I read Vladimir Lossky's Mystical Theology I've enjoyed and drawn from the EO tradition of starting with the concrete when it comes to the Trinity. Still, I thought the EO put the unity of God as the person of the Father, right? I mean, "three subsistences" are only one God if there's something to join them, and that still leads to a "God behind the three subsistences" if the unity is an abstraction.

4. If a spirit is the very essence of what a person is, then to what extent is the Holy Spirit the very essence of what the Father is?

5. Again I wonder how clear I was. I do not mean to imply that the Son or Spirit are impersonal; far from it. But I do mean to ask the question: are we sure that the Son/Word/Spirit's essence is not, in large part, that of intermediary? When the Word becomes flesh, Jesus does not shy from using "intermediary" language of himself, "I am the way", "I am the door". Is he speaking only of his incarnation, or also of his eternal essence? Before the incarnation, God revealed himself through the Word and that Word was/is/shall be Christ.

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

Hi, Anne,

> 1. I think we're in agreement
> here, & you put it very
> beautifully.

Thanks. Agreement is always beautiful.

> 2. … The part that I'm wondering > is whether it follows that,
> as you so nicely put it, they
> were other "centers of
> awareness" (roughly what I
> meant by "meaningfully distinct > from the Father"). Based on what > do we say so?
> How would we know that?

Based upon God’s changelessness. Whatever, or Whoever, He is, is Who He has always been.

> 3. I thought the EO put the
> unity of God as the person of
> the Father, right?

Right, and I failed to make that clear.

> I mean, "three subsistences" are > only one God if there's
> something to join them, and
> that still leads to a "God
> behind the three subsistences"
> if the unity is an abstraction.

Well said! But the unity is no abstraction. It is a Person. The Principle of Unity, the Fountainhead of Divinity, is the Father, Who eternally (“before time”) confers His exact same divine Being (Essence) upon Son and Holy Spirit, so that all Three share the very same Being (Essence).

> 4. If a spirit is the very
> essence of what a person is,
> then to what extent is the Holy
> Spirit the very essence of what > the Father is?

I'm not sure I worded that well. But of course both the Son and the Holy Spirit share the very Essence of the Father -- without, however, *constituting* It.

> 5. But I do mean to ask the
> question: are we sure that the
> Son/Word/Spirit's essence
> is not, in large part, that of
> intermediary?

Whatever God’s Essence is, all Three Persons share it. It is identical in them all. Thus, only if they are *all* “intermediary” in Essence could any of them be.

When we are speaking of “God as He is in Himself,” (when we are speaking of the Divine Essence) The Persons are distinguishable ONLY as to origin, the Father being unoriginate, the Son being “begotten” of the Father, the Spirit “proceeding from the Father.”

Only when we are speaking of “God as He relates to the Creation,” (when we are speaking of the Divine, Uncreated Energies, or “Economic Trinity”) then we can speak of the Three Persons as taking different, complementary *functions or roles*. The Son is the Intermediary vis-à-vis creation because He is God’s Mind, or Reason, or Mentality, or Logic (Logos), so that “without Him, nothing was made that was made.” (And He is God’s Mind eternally, even before there was any creature to whom to speak, which is why “Word” may not be the best translation.) The Holy Spirit effectuates God’s Mind in the world, as when we see Him hovering over the face of the deep or overshadowing the Virgin. Or again, *relative to us*, the Father is transcendent, the Son is “God with us,” Immanuel, and the Holy Spirit is God within us. (And when we say the Holy Spirit resides in us, we must remember that each of the Three Persons is fully indwelt by the other Two! Put another way, in each Person is the Fullness of God.)

In short, God, in His Essence, never changes; He is always one and the same God.

But God, in His Uncreated, Divine Energies, can change. For example, God’s foreknowledge ends when that which He always foreknew has come to pass. His intention to create this particular flower ends when He has created it. His desire to rescue Israel from Pharaoh ends when the liberation is accomplished. And so forth.

It’s this distinction between Essence and Energies that answers so many excellent questions, such as have been raised over at your wonderful blog both by you and your readers. Like how God can still be called unchanging once He creates something. Now He has a new relationship going, which never existed before; how can that be?

St. Gregory Palamas says that if the divine energy does not differ from the divine essence,

Then neither would the making of things, which belongs to the energy, differ from the begetting and giving procession, which belong to the essence. And if the making of things did not differ from begetting and giving procession, then things made would not differ in any way from what is begotten and proceeds. If this is how things were, then the very Son of God and the Holy Spirit would be no different than creatures. (St. Gregory Palamas, Natural Chapters, 96, P.G.150, 1189.

Weekend Fisher said...

Hi Anastasia

I won't prolong this indefinitely but am hoping you don't mind the conversation; I'm enjoying it.

Whatever God’s Essence is, all Three Persons share it. It is identical in them all. Thus, only if they are *all* “intermediary” in Essence could any of them be. And that is exactly where I have questions. You say the traditional formula very well. Here's why I'm not sure the traditional formula covers all the ground: the Son and the Spirit indwell us; the Father does not. The Son is a door to the Father; the Father is not a door to the Son. The Son is the Word of the Father, the Father is not the Word of the Son. All these so far are things we probably both agree on. But it seems the implication of all that is that the son has a ... fumbling for words here ... "direction"? "role"? that is essential to his being, and that is to take the Father and reveal the Father to us. Consider this: The unity of God is in the person of the Father. The Father is the only one of the three who never directly indwells us. The Son and the Spirit indwell us and bring the God's eternal life into us. They are the bridge between us and the Father.

Now, again on the assumption that what Son and Spirit do is our best indication what they are, and what they are is what they have always been, it seems likely to me that their very nature -- when discussed as separate "persons" from the Father -- is that of intermediary between God and creation.

Consider how similar this is to what you said before: Only when we are speaking of “God as He relates to the Creation,” (when we are speaking of the Divine, Uncreated Energies, or “Economic Trinity”) then we can speak of the Three Persons as taking different, complementary *functions or roles*.

Given that when we speak of the Economic Trinity we speak of them doing different things and being different things. But haven't we also said before that the Economic Trinity either is the Immanent Trinity or is, at any rate, all we know of the Immanent Trinity?

I'm not advocating a view of "change in God", but I am questioning whether intermediary is essential by nature to the Word of God.

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

I’m equally enjoying our conversation! Don’t hurry to end it on my account.

Oh, I think I see what you are saying.

God is all the things you say, but by acts of His own free will (viz., by His Uncreated Energies), rather than by nature. This can be seen very easily by reflecting upon this: that whatever God’s Being is, He had it before He created anything with which He could interact. I think we agree on that.

But here’s the rub: nope, we aren’t permitted to assume we can extrapolate backward, from how the Persons behave within creation to what They are in their Essence. St. Irenaeus, for example, says this in Refutation of Heretics, 3, XXIV, 2. St. Basil the great also points this out. (But I can’t decipher the footnote I’m looking at well enough to tell you where! I *think in Refutation of the Apology of the Impious Eunomius, Homily 1, P.G. 29, 545.)

The reason we may not so extrapolate backward is that God’s Essence is absolutely unique. It has no parallel, no analog, nothing even remotely comparable to it or kin to it, by which our minds might grasp anything about it. It is wholly beyond our perception, our experience, our imagination, our reason. We can indeed see a Person who possesses it, Jesus Christ, but the Essence itself entirely eludes us.

Does that address your question??

Oh -- and if you are suggesting the Essence might not be the same in all Three Persons, won't that mean three gods?

Weekend Fisher said...

Hi there

I don't think "three gods" is even a possiblity. But -- let me put the gist of the same question in slightly different words. I think -- let me know if I'm wrong here -- I think we both hold as given that Christ *is* the Word of God, based on John 1 and the other places where such language is used of Christ. Is Christ's eternal nature -- or should I say the Son's eternal nature -- that of the Word of God? That is to say, is the "second person" of the Trinity the Word of God by nature?

I know there are theologians who say no there, for example Jurgen Moltmann says that the Son of God was predestined to become the Word of God, and I suppose from there that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But it seems to me that St. John the Theologian is telling us in his gospel that Christ's eternal nature is that of the Word of God.

The Father's eternal naure is not the Word of God, but the one who "conceives" and "speaks" the Word of God.

I am wondering whether the question of the origin of the "persons of the Trinity" is bound to the question of God's creative act so that their origin imprints the very natures of the "persons" with certain roles so that these roles are inextricably bound to how and why they originated from the Father, e.g. the Word as intermediary between God and his creation.

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

I have to agree with you, with St. John the Theologian and against Moltmann, that the Word was always the Word of God, was in the beginning with God, was God. Yes, this is eternally so. Before the creation and during it and after it. IOW, nothing to do with Energies, now, after all.

But to say that is not to describe the Essence, either, but the Person possessing it. The Persons are distinguished by their eternal relations, and in particular their relations of origin. Thus, the Word is eternally and beginninglessly "spoken" or "begotten" of the Father.

Okay, so we agree we need to avoid tri-theism. For that, the Essence must be identical in all three Persons. A different Being is, well, a different Being.

I keep meaning to say, blessings on you, too!